An Exploratory Review of Regional Perspectives on Social Capital and Occupational Studies
Jin, Zhiyi (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d'Antropologia Social i Cultural)
Duijn, Marijtje A. J. van (University of Groningen (Països Baixos). Department of Sociology)
Steglich, Christian (Linköping University (Suècia). Institute for Analytical Sociology)

Date:	2026
Description:	38 pag.
Abstract:	Social capital is one of the most influential yet fragmented concepts in the social sciences. To gain insight into its substantive use within specific domains, this review explores how social capital (SC) has been applied in occupational studies, with particular attention to regional perspectives. Building on Adams and Fitch's bibliometric mapping, it applies abstract-based topic modeling with citation data to identify thematic clusters and theoretical foundations within a corpus spanning over four decades. The results show that SC remains widely used across diverse themes. Citation patterns vary sharply across topics, with few sharing unified theoretical anchors. A closer look at studies on the topic of regional perspective reveals that SC is more employed as a background concept rather than through theorization or explicit operationalization. These findings refine Adams and Fitch's conclusions on the fragmentation of SC research and highlight research opportunities for connecting SC mechanisms to regional perspectives.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Social capital ; Regional perspective ; Occupational studies ; Bibliometric topic modeling
Published in:	Social sciences, Vol. 15, Num. 4 (2026) , art. 221, ISSN 2076-0760

DOI: 10.3390/socsci15040221

38 p, 5.9 MB

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